


The Lady Diminishes

by useyourlove



Series: All Possible Worlds [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourlove/pseuds/useyourlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Slayer makes it to a reasonable expiration date with two unchanging pretty boys at her side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady Diminishes

**Author's Note:**

> Thought this up walking home from work. It then occurred to me that it would be extremely unlikely to ever happen and I thought up a whole mess of other eventualities as well. The central theme seems to be the multiple and varied angsty deaths of Buffy Summers. I would also like to note that I likely suck very hard at writing Angel at all. He's not my thing. I'm working on it. 100% unbeta'd and stream of consciousness. It is what it is.

When Spike looked into her face it was impossible. It was impossible that she was still here. Impossible that she could be around this long. The fine chiseled grisled lines of her face, sagging and etched like a marble statue pitted by sandstorms. Carefully tended she had made it this far. They always had her back--one or the other of them, or both sometimes even. She never went into a fight without backup. And here she was, hale and well but old. So very impossibly old.

She had never said a word. Not when she looked their age, not when she passed them. Not when total strangers told her what fine sons she had, and then grandsons, and soon it would be great-grandsons.

Even the Slayer ages. Even the fittest people must die. No one lives forever. You have to die to do that. Spike had held out hope for an impossibly long time that there was some crazy cosmic loophole that she had jumped through and she would stay young and strong forever, with golden hair gleaming in the sunshine that he could never walk in beside her.

Angel had mentioned it first. Tactfully. Sweetly even. Wrapped completely in Angel's body, her fingers laced with Spike's, an ankle tossed over his thigh in the hot afternoon in the middle of a brownout, he told her just how beautiful she was, how gracefully she had aged. They fucked again, the three of them, right then, ages ago now. Ages and aeons, and what felt like half a lifetime but wasn't even a quarter of how long Spike had been around. Spike never mentioned it at all. He traced the years with his fingers trailing over her body--an uncannily accurate indicator of how long it had been. How long they had been together.

But she was ill now. The tepid cough of summer had turned into a deep grinding hack. There was nothing anyone could do. Bodies got old. They wore out. You couldn't replace the parts the way you could change out the cogs of a clock. How she'd even gotten so old, Spike still marveled. The skin on her hands translucent; the beautiful green of her eyes still preternaturally clear for someone so aged. Her hair a bright brilliant white--appropriate.

The cough drew him to her side, hand on her shoulder, watching the fire play in the stone grate. She wrapped her delicate fingers around his. Delicate. _His_ Slayer!

Did he think he would keep her forever, trapped in amber like a prehistoric mosquito? No, that was him. Himself. And the great bloody poof. Forever unchanging like extinct insects. Unwavering in the moment of death like figures on a Grecian Urn. He'd always loved Keats. He would never be Keats.

"Spike," she said, her beautiful smile still her own. He leaned in and kissed her temple. "It's time," she said.

"No."

"Pick me up," she held her arms out to him like a needy toddler. "Take me to the window."

He scooped her into his arms, rail thin and crinkling like paper.

"I won't let you go," he said. "I can't."

"You have to," she whispered, drawing a shuddering breath and refusing to cough. "You've had me long enough."

"No such thing."

He folded her into the window seat as if she would crumble and blow away. She wouldn't. She was still his girl. Still the Slayer. He knew that. But all things come to an end. Even Slayers. He knew that too; better than most.

"Go get Angel for me," she said, leaving a soft kiss on his cheekbone and trailing her hand along his shoulder with a squeeze.

He turned.

"And Spike," she said, pausing for a labored breath. "You…you come back too."

He nodded, without turning, and swept away.

Spike brought Angel, swooping and moody like the worst combination of a bat and a brood hen. He took her hand, muttering and denying and mumbling. The great ruddy things he had to say--grandiose and over-zealous like a lead actor in a soap opera. How she stood him for so long, Spike never knew. How _Spike_ stood him for so long he could never figure either.

Buffy raised her hand to Angel's cheek, gently, the soft pads of her fingers as electric as they had ever been. She leaned forward, her chin jutting out, begging for a kiss.

Angel kissed her gently, fingers going into her pristine hair, cupping the nape of her neck. She kissed him back, fervently, a lifetime's worth of kisses crammed into whatever instant she could steal. A sixteen-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her and a ninety-one-year-old woman with a full life behind. And no more to come.

Spike rested his fingertips against Angel's shoulder, and broke the kiss. The girl needed air.

Buffy wheezed.

Sometimes Spike wished he had killed her in her prime, snatched her from the fate of a quiet death. She'd never had a quiet death before--always a loud one. A raucous death with meaning and purpose that saved the whole bloody world in the process.

She coughed gently and reached for Spike, her whole face blazing.

Maybe he should've turned her. Decades ago. Centuries ago. Steal a time machine and steal Buffy back for all eternity. Changed, of course. Would she have been as vicious as he? As Angel? More so, probably. He used to dream about it, when her hair started to speckle gray. It had haunted his nightmares. Because that's what they were: nightmares. It was only desperation that made him think of it now.

He took her hand.

"Stay with me," she said, so low he wondered if she meant to say it out loud at all.

He shifted her, without a word, swinging his legs on either side of her and settling her back against his chest, tucked against him like a porcelain doll.

He held her nestled against him, smaller now than she'd ever been, the labored rhythm of her chest as vivid to his entire being as if his own heart were beating in his ribs. Slower and harder.

They sat for hours, watching the stars. Watching the moon swing its way across the sky in a gentle arc. Angel sat beside them, fingers laced with hers, fingers caressing her leg, fingers brushing Spike's skin.

They'd been through too much, all three of them. Too much for it to ever end. What would they do without her? The panic rose and quelled in both their chests like a month's worth of tides, but Buffy was calm.

The sun crested the horizon, visible but not yet high enough to burn. "I love you," she said, to neither in particular. She said to both. They both took it in equal measure, locking those precious, jealously hoarded words up tight. That was all they would have. She drew one deep shuddering breath and let it out, resting her cheek against Spike's arm.

He sat there, husk pressed against him until the sting of the morning rays fizzled against his flesh.

"Come on," Angel finally said, pulling him away from the blistering unbearable sun. Unbearable, it was. The burn. The heat. The emptiness. The stillness of her body, so always alive and brilliant. Blame it on the sun. "Come on, Spike," the gentleness of Angel's voice finally nudged him into motion. He stood and Angel reached for her.

He took Spike's hand in his own, startling him enough that he drew a deep breath. "Let's take her home," Angel said. But they both knew she was home already.


End file.
